Diamond day for happy couple

ate aviation photographer and enthusiast Gavin Conroy.

Gavin has been to every air show since its inception.

“We have a well-established committee with huge experience,” he says.

“It is a massive team effort which I love.

“Serious planning for each show begins eighteen months out and a wish list of around sixty planes we’d like to be involved is made up.

“It’s then a matter of contacting the owners and seeing what is available. Around forty percent are already based in Blenheim and the rest come from all around New Zealand.”

Yealand’s Classic Fighters is on this weekend at Omaka Airfield, in Blenheim.

Cherie and Jim Lochead believe they were destined to meet.

Sixty years ago, the Blenheim couple met at RNZAF Base Woodbourne where Jim worked as an aircraft engineer and Cherie as a clerk.

As the pair get set to celebrate 60 years of married life, they explain they were bound to have met at some point.

“I think we’d have met anyway as it was meant to be,” smiles Cherie.

“We would have met at the same parties.”

Married at Blenheim’s Church of the Nativity on April 6, 1963, by Archdeacon Kirkham, Jim and Cherie were engaged after five weeks.

There was no need to wait any longer, Cherie says.

“When you know, you know.”

While she wasn’t expecting a proposal so soon, Cherie says she knew her answer was a definite yes.

“We’d been going out for about three weeks and Jim’s sister turned 21 and I had a 21st to go to in Blenheim so we were apart.

“I thought it was going well and thought that when we got back, we’d know.”

Smiling as he talks about the day he proposed, Jim says he didn’t get down on bended knee.

“It wasn’t the done thing then but she did say yes straightaway. It doesn’t seem like 60 years; I don’t know where the years have gone.”

After spotting a photo in a magazine of her dream dress, Cherie contacted a local dressmaker who successfully recreated the look in satin and lace.

“It was a beautiful day,” Cheries says.

After a wedding reception at Waterlea Racecourse, the pair honeymooned in Kaiteriteri for five days before setting up home in Blenheim.

Some of the gifts they were given are still proudly in use today, Cherie says.

“In those days you didn’t live together first so people had a kitchen tea for the bride and a tool night for the men in the garage.

“I still have a colander and a mixer.” While the couple, who have three children, don’t share many common interests except walking, they agree that tolerance and not keeping secrets is the key to a successful marriage.

“Never go to bed on an argument,” says Jim. “You will always have disagreements but if you leave it, it will just fester.”

“You have to be friends first, that’s the difference,” Cherie adds.